Tyler is a junior at Northeastern University. He spent nearly a year and a half as a sports correspondent at The Boston Globe. His work has also been featured on the sports sites Blue Man Hoop and Forsyth & Speare. He interned for seven months with the San Francisco-based tech startup Netpulse. He is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Manjinder Singh, 42, in his taxi before starting his shift outside the Renaissance Hotel in Midtown.Gabriella Angotti-Jones/NYT Institute

Taxi medallions were once worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and could be used to leverage loans for things like home purchases or college tuition. But now the owners of those medallions are struggling to make ends meet.

The corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, where increased commercialization has threatened the local small business community. Tyler Blint-Welsh/NYT Institute